Music Therapy Tuesday

The fall season returns to the south. Hurricanes begin sweeping up from Cuba, and if they hit on the Gulf side, they are certain to bring rain even to Atlanta.

Another sure thing is all the obligations fall brings. For parents, it's new school schedules, from academics to athletics. At my parish, it means the summer break is over and new classes and committees take over. If you were voted to sit on parish council, the meetings are fresh and new and people stay over to chat and reconnect. By January, inevitably, most people are more concerned about getting home before the chill sets in. In September however, it's still warm after dark, so people stand in the parking lot in companionable clusters, solving the world's problems under the floodlights.

For me, fall is always a return to choir practice, each Tuesday night. They started last week, but I wasn't able to be there, so tonight was my return. I was struck by the community intertwined in the seeming repetitious drudgery that is Tuesday Night Traditional Choir practice.

The choir contains people from all walks of life, but I'll admit it, I'm the youngest. I am surrounded therefore by about a dozen older folk who love the sound of my voice and when I push open the doors each evening to enter the church sanctuary, I'm greeted with sounds of approval. "Hey! Laura's here." I'm sure this must irritate the choir director, who wishes it didn't happen every time (or that I'd get there early, heaven forbid). 

Afterwards, everyone wants to know just a little bit about me. "Oh, I haven't seen you recently, I miss you." or, "Well how's work, are you still okay?" or, "You look good, have you lost weight?" or, "How's your mother and father? Are they coming for a visit soon?" At one point in my life I would have viewed this as intrusive, but it's just natural to me now. They love me because I'm like a child they wished they'd raised but don't have to be responsible for. I'm not asking for money or needing a place to stay, so they think I'm pretty great.

But something else, very important, goes on during practice. I call it as music therapy. 

We were learning a new Psalm for the season, and it was in chant - a special style known as a Gelineau tone. I couldn't find a real Gelineau tone online, but this rendition is conveys the idea. Learning a new song always involves a process that goes something like this:

First, you stumble over each note, reaching for it, wondering where it is, waiting for the piano to find it for you. You get through the first verse and everyone realizes that you didn't know the piece, so the director instructs you to repeat it. On the second try, you do a bit better, but now the piano is distracting, and it changes notes before you think it should, and the two of you sound like you're competing to have a conversation, one trying to be louder than the other. 

Then comes the third try. You take a deep breath. You readjust your glasses. You hold the book closer. You know that on Sunday, you're going to need to stand up front of the entire congregation and deliver this song. You cannot count on the choir to cover up your mistakes. 

The world slips away in this moment. The other singers and the piano cease to be a distraction. You receive the opening note, and you anchor yourself on it. And the notes begin to guide you. Up-Up-Up-Down-Up. First phrase is done. Up-Up-Down-WayDown-Up.  

Oh, you've got it now. The entire phrase has a progression and a form. And the next phrase builds on the first, creating a tension, then resolving it. And so does the next. And so does the next. It's hard to explain, but the notes on the page suck you into them. You balance on them. You steady yourself on one note, then reach for the next. 

The concentration gets you through without flaw finally, and you are able to relax. The next time you sing it, you can even add some flavor, some color, rounding vowels, improving phrasing. 

And that's when you look up, and practice is over, and you realize that for a full hour and a half, you had no work to do but balance on those notes. No one called you. No one had a crisis. All your worries belonged to someone else. I'm not sure how your day goes in an average week, but to find something that distracts me from mine for an hour is a real treat. It's like a visit to a spa, only free. I walk out humming. I drive home humming. I fall asleep humming. 

A sponge bath for the brain. Rest for the restless. Music therapy.

--Laura

Museum Day

September 27th is Museum Day, when museums and cultural institutions nationwide open their doors free of charge to Smithsonian magazine readers and Smithsonian.com visitors. The day is a celebration of culture and learning, and treats visitors to the free-admission policy of the Smithsonian Institution.

The local Marietta Museum of History (pictured to the right) is participating in this event. I'm sure there will be at least one museum in your area doing the same. Take the opportunity to see what your local area has to offer - no risk involved, and I guarantee you'll learn a lot.

For a list, by state, of other participating venues, visit the Smithsonian website here.

--Laura

I Believe in Community

I got a great email from my dad's cousin yesterday. She said she was going through boxes, and had found lots of Burke papers - birth and marriage certificates, First Communion documents, stuff like that. She wanted to know if I'd like to have it.

Of course I did.

I returned her email with a chatty one of my own, and among other bits of news, I shared some of my latest goals with her. I find that expressing my goals has become easier these days. When my priest asked what had been going on for me lately, I told him as well. There's a calculated reason for this. I believe in community.

When I was younger, I used to have a negative opinion of community. I viewed them as oppressive and restrictive, viewed the people as nosy and judgmental. Certainly, some communities can be. But there's a subtle line there, and it's worth noting. When you let a community tell you who you are, they will control your life. But when you tell a community who you are, they will support you instead. And in fact, if you share with a community not only who you are, but who you want to be, whenever possible they will help you get there.

When you're a kid, that means the adults in the neighborhood will buy the worst tasting beverage imaginable from your lemonade stand and declare that it's fabulous. When you're an adult, that means they encourage you, tease you, quiz you, and hold your feet to the fire while you develop your plans. Their persistence can sometimes even substitute for your own, reminding you that your goals aren't all in your head.

In fact, just the other day when I confessed to a friend that my goals were big and scary, she did just what a community member does. She gently encouraged me to get over it, with these words: Dreams are no more scary than real life. If your dreams were unrealistic, you'd know it. But you know they aren't.

This may not seem connected to the memorabilia I mentioned earlier. I was reminded however of a piece of family history I already have. In these obituaries, you see people, recently deceased, being described by the loved ones they left behind. You can't help but wonder how you'd be described if someone were writing yours.

These family members had a loving community to miss them when they were gone, a community that knew who they were. So at my age, as I am reconnecting with who I am and who I always wanted to be, I acknowledge not only that I have dreams, but that I can nurture them into reality. I find that I want my community to know that the dreams are as much a part of me as the real bits they already know about. I'm not afraid of telling them in case I were to fail and embarrass myself. In fact, I'm not even afraid of falling or failing anymore, I'm just afraid of not trying. And I need them, along with my family, to remind and encourage me to keep trying.

That's how hard things get done. With help. And when you know that getting help will definitely make hard things easier, don't you want everyone to know?

--Laura

Village Elders

My encounter with Tom, the pool guru, got me thinking about my elders.

The African proverb, made so popular by Hillary, claims that it takes a village to raise a child. That can be taken to mean that lots of people contribute to a child's well-being, in fact to the well-being of... well, anyone's being. But there's more to this than meets the eye.

I've always been fortunate to have lots of older people in my life. They say in some of the "birth order" literature out there that only children will develop the strongest relationships with people years younger or years older than themselves. This has been true for me. As a young girl, I loved to visit Mrs. Margie, who taught me how to make sugared violets. In college, most of my friends were 3rd or 4th year, even when I was a freshman. When I graduated and moved to the mountains of north Georgia, I befriended the "blue haired" set because of my work schedule, and delighted in their company as much as they delighted in mine. Today, even as a young adult, I spend a fair amount of my time with adults old enough to be my grandparents.

And if you don't do this, I caution you. I think you're making a mistake.

I don't think it's healthy to surround yourself only with people your own age. This is why I've never felt comfortable in social settings geared to Young Professionals or Young Singles or Young Adult Catholics. These people are all in the same boat I'm in. Heck, some are a lot worse off than I am, so the only real satisfaction I get is in knowing I'm not quite as screwed up as the guy sitting next to me.

I prefer the multi-generational approach to living: people much older than myself, people younger than myself, people my age and people from all walks of life. People in different stages of life are interesting. They have things to teach you.

One such couple befriended me in the north Georgia town I lived in prior to moving to the Atlanta area. I first met Rita when I began taking instruction in the church. Because I worked 3-11, I could pop by the church and help her and the other "Garden Angels" tend to the church grounds. She was a silver-haired, practical woman who despite living the last 2 decades in the south had still managed to retain her Minnesota accent. She and Gordy lived on the lake and had made a hobby out of adding onto their house. They were healthy and industrious people, and by now it was the size of the Pentagon.

By the time I entered the church, they had both become good friends, and once a month or so I was invited to their house for dinner. Those were some of the most enjoyable evenings of my time in that town. We'd talk about everything from history, politics, religion, dating, work, you name it. In fact, we often covered all those topics in one night, until we were all tired and yawning, and they were still reluctant to see me go. Keep in mind, these were not lonely elders. They had 6 kids who were regular visitors to the river house. They were constantly on the go, involved in both their community and their church. Gordy had taught himself how to design web pages "just to keep myself out of the bars."

They were interesting. They weren't like me. They had things to tell me about how to live my life. They were interested in what I had to say. They respected me, and I respected them.

What makes that different from friends your own age? Well, that's hard to put into words. Maybe it's because you aren't in the same stage of "figuring things out." They have seen things you haven't, and they listen with a relatively neutral ear.

The other thing is that they teach me to be a little less harsh on myself. Older people like to take breaks. They don't tackle the whole day at one time. They get where they are going by pacing themselves, but they get there nonetheless. Sometimes, I forget that I should stop for a while and rest, refresh and renew myself between projects. Much like the observation that "you always will have the poor with you," there will always be a task set ahead of us, with things to take care of. Your ability to do this hinges on the time you take for yourself, to restore yourself, to keep yourself physically and emotionally strong, and the time you take to learn from your experiences. Otherwise, life stays pretty much the same, and you become a mindless cog in the wheel, endlessly repeating the same behaviors and getting the same results.

Sitting a spell, talking it out with an older friend who wants little more than your company is insurance - against turning your life into an endless assembly line of duty and responsibility.

I heard this once: Yankees will spend thousands a year to sit on a couch and talk to a stranger, calling it "therapy." Southerners spend an afternoon with friends, sitting on a couch and call it "just visiting."

If that's just a southern thing, I'm sorry, it's time to expose the secret. The economy is bad these days, people, so take advantage of this tip. Consulting with the village elders is free, and the rewards are immeasurable.

--Laura